


Every Breath You Take

by Selphie142



Category: markiplier - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Love, Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 22:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2789456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selphie142/pseuds/Selphie142
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants her. He needs to be with her. She should want to be with him. And why does Mark have to be in the way.</p><p>Emily gets stuck with Mark in an elevator at PAX, and after helping her through a panic attack they become friends. Feelings develop between them and they become closer. Things are going well until someone starts to stalk Emily. Then she starts seeing Mark in 2 places at once...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Breath You Take

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Every Breath You Take" in minor key as sung by Chase Holfelder.

“So, you know I don’t really play games, right?” Emily said.

“I know, but Peter bailed out on me last minute. Besides, you get free stuff here so shush.”

“What exactly am I gonna do here anyway... apart from getting free stuff. Is that it?”

“Well, there’s gonna be loads of games to try, loads that aren’t even finished yet. Who knows maybe we can make a gamer out of you yet!”

Emily folded her arms across her chest. “Just because my pile of games is smaller than yours doesn’t mean I’m not a gamer.”

“Five games do not make you a gamer.”

“Oh, shut up Natalie! I happen to enjoy those games! And I’m good at them too!” Emily retorted, sticking her tongue out at her friend. “Is there anything specifically you came all this way for?”

“I wanna go find the YouTube section where you can meet some let’s players. I really want to see if I can get photos with some of them.”

“Oh, so that’s the real reason why you wanted to come. So you can touch some online celebrities! And that’s why you insisted I came along; to be your wingman!” laughed Emily.

“I need someone to ground me – I know I’m gonna fangirl so hard! I mean there are some seriously cute YouTubers out there.”

Once Emily and Natalie had entered the convention they spent a few hours wandering around. Natalie agreed with Emily to work systematically even though it meant they would get to the YouTube section nearer the end of the day.

“So,” Natalie started, “that panel I’d like to go to is starting in 10 minutes and it’s just...” She looked at her map, “down here.”

“Well, I’m seriously hungry so I’m gonna head downstairs and get something to eat. You enjoy your panel thingy. I’ll meet you in the food court.”

“Okay, Em. It’s only an hour long so I’ll come find you in a little bit then we can head back to that clothing booth after if you want.”

“Yeah, that sounds great. See you later.”

Emily left Natalie queuing at the entrance to the main stage where the panel would be taking place and headed towards the elevator. She would need to return to the ground level and, after hours of wandering around the convention, she didn’t feel like taking the stairs. She knew taking the elevator wasn’t the best idea, but she also knew it would only be for a few minutes she’d be alright. After a few minutes the doors to the elevator opened and Emily let the few people out before stepping inside. There was nobody else taking the elevator with her, which was good; she’d be able to focus on her breathing. The doors were just about to close when she heard a voice call out.

“Hey! Hold the door!”

Before she could react a hand suddenly appeared in the small gap between the doors, causing them to reopen. They pulled back to reveal a man who looked to be around her own age. His dark hair was fashioned into a lazy faux-hawk, the sleeves of his black shirt, emblazoned with a red “M”, clung to his biceps and his smile was warm and comforting. She bit her lip and looked at the floor. If she was going to have to share her elevator experience with another person, she got the feeling that she’d be okay sharing it with him.

“Woah, that was close, huh?” he said, walking towards the back of the elevator.

She assumed he was talking to her so she glanced at him, “Uh, yeah. Real close. Almost left without you.”

He gave her an amused smile, which was just as warm as the last, and leaned back against the railing around the edge of the elevator. The doors finally eased shut and the elevator gave a judder as it began its descent. Emily grasped the railing tightly and held her breath until its journey smoothed out after a few moments. She looked up at the other occupant. He seemed to be studying the pattern of the wallpaper of the elevator and looked completely at ease... and kinda cute. She used his distraction to examine him closer. She hadn’t even noticed his glasses which, in hindsight, seemed kinda too obvious to miss first time around. She glanced down and –

She was jostled from her thoughts as the elevator suddenly stopped.

“Oh, God!” Emily cried out.

She gripped the railing with both hands this time, and her knuckles began to turn white. She could feel her breathing hitch. She needed to take some deep breaths, but it was hard to think past the walls closing in towards her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. It was that guy. He’d moved away from the railing at the back of the elevator and was pressing buttons.

“Hmm, not working.”

Emily was beginning to feel faint and she could feel her legs starting to give out.

“Hey. You okay?” The voice sounded distant and distorted. Then she felt something on her arm. She turned to see a figure standing by her. There was a hand was on her arm. She heard the same voice again but closer this time, “You’re not looking so good. You feeling okay?”

She tried to speak, but she couldn’t. Her body was telling her she needed more oxygen. Her mind was telling her she wasn’t getting out and that the walls would eventually envelop her.

“Walls,” she managed to croak.

“Right, okay. Let’s just... sit down.” He carefully helped Emily to the floor, supporting her weight just as her legs were giving way.

“Just close your eyes and take some deep breaths. You’re okay. It’s just you and me.”

Emily closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing, but she couldn’t forget her situation of being trapped in the elevator forever. She was never getting out.

“Deep breath in,” he said and paused, waiting for her to follow his instructions. “Deep breath out.” Another pause. “In, and out.”

She continued to breathe in time with his words.

In. Out.

In. Out.

After a few repetitions he stopped speaking but he continued to breathe at the same pace which Emily followed. Once her breathing had spaced out she took the opportunity to open her eyes and saw the guy was sat on the floor crossed legged right in front of her. He gave her a wide, warm smile. It seemed like he was genuinely happy that she was feeling better.

“Hi. Feeling better?”

She nodded.

“Good. What’s your name?”

“Emily.” She spoke quietly. She was feeling kinda embarrassed that she’d had a panic attack while trapped with a stranger, and a handsome one at that. “What’s yours?”

He looked slightly taken aback for a moment but quickly recovered into a small smile. He held out a hand.

“Mark. I’m Mark.”

Emily shook his hand.

A tinny voice suddenly called out, “Hello? Hello?”

Mark stood and rushed over to the small speaker above the buttons of the elevator.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hey! Everything okay in there? Is it just you?”

“There’s two of us; there’s a young woman in here with me. What’s going on?”

“There seems to be a glitch in the fire system which is stopping the elevators from moving. We’ve got an engineer taking a look at it, but we’re not entirely sure what the problem is so you could be in there for a while. It looks like you’re between floors at the moment so we don’t think it’ll be too safe trying to get you out manually. I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as I know. If you have any problems just hit the speaker button and you’ll come through directly to me.”

Mark glanced down at Emily. She seemed to breathing quicker again and was almost on the verge of having another panic attack. He guessed that the news that they wouldn’t be rescued quickly wasn’t helping her claustrophobia.

“Okay, thank you,” Mark said quickly and hurried back to sit on the floor with Emily.

“I’m afraid of mannequins.”

“What?”

“Mannequins. I don’t like them. They’re creepy and you never know what they’re gonna do when your back is turned.”

Emily really didn’t know what to say so she looked at Mark with an amused smile. He made eye contact with her and mirrored her smile. After a few moments Emily tried and failed to stifle her giggle and burst into laughter which caused Mark to follow suit. It took a few moments for them to calm down.

“So,” Mark started, “How’re you enjoying the convention?”

He thought it would a good idea to keep Emily distracted from their predicament.

“Yeah, it’s pretty fun apart from the fact I don’t really play games. My mate Natalie dragged me here. She wanted to come touch some people from YouTube. What about you, do you play many video games?”

“Oh, one or two. Anything in particular you like? I’m mainly into horror. ”

“I pretty good at Mario Kart,” Emily shrugged.

“Mario Kart’s pretty fun. Hard, but fun.”

“It just takes practice. I kinda wish I had some friends who’d play with me but they prefer playing PC games and my PC sucks. It’s so old it can barely run Windows. I really should buy a new one.”

“I dunno if you would need to buy a new one. You could probably just upgrade certain parts and it’d be okay. You probably just need a new processor and graphics card, maybe some more memory. It wouldn’t be that expensive either. Certainly cheaper than buying a whole retail unit.”

“I guess, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“I’m sure I could give you a hand. If you lemme borrow your phone I can bookmark some webpages for you.”

“Sure, okay.”

Emily dug around in her pocket and pulled out her iPhone. She handed it to Mark. He went to unlock it but stopped to look at the photograph she had for her lock screen. It was of a small group of people dressed in medieval-style outfits. Mark could see Emily stood near the middle of the group in a light blue crushed-velvet dress, her brown hair half pulled back into a ponytail to reveal her elongated ear tips and she had a beautiful smile on her face. He showed her the screen.

“Hey. This is pretty cool. What’s this from?”

“Oh!” Emily felt her cheeks warm. “Comic Con. I went as Arwen. From Lord of the Rings?”

“Yeah, I know it.” Mark clicked the screen on again as it had turned off, and held it closer to his face to try and get a better look at the photo.

“Here.”

Emily took her phone back from him and fiddled around with it until she had the photo open on the screen. She handed it back to him. She saw him zoom, and unzoom and flick through her photos.

“Woah, now this is nice!”

He turned the phone back to her to show her the photo he was currently looking at. It was a photo of her overlooking a balcony. She was supposed to be her as a pondering Arwen, probably about missing Aragon. It was one of her favourite photos. It showed off her beautiful dress, the light composition was great as were the proportions, and she felt that it captured the right emotions from the scene they were recreating. She felt herself blush again and averted her gaze away from Mark.

“This is really good. I love your outfit. Where’d you get it from?”

She looked back at Mark.

“I made it.”

He zoomed back in and held it closer to examine finer details.

“You made that?! Wow! It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks. Have you ever cosplayed?”

“Ha. Actually, no, I haven’t but it looks like a lot of fun! I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Well, the first place to start is to figure out what fandom you want to cosplay from. It’s best to start with a fandom you really enjoy, or a fandom you can do with your friends.”

Mark pondered for a moment.

“I guess I could be an elf. Think I could pull off Legolas?” he said sitting up straighter and puffing out his chest.

Emily laughed, “Sure. Why not? You can be anyone you want to be. The main thing is that you have fun.”

He slumped back down.

“Hmm, but I don’t have a costume though and I really don’t think I’d have time to make one.”

“I could help you. Uh... if you wanted me to, of course.” She rubbed the back of her neck.

“Yeah, that’d be awesome! Where abouts do you live?”

“L.A.”

“Hey! Me too! Guess that’d make things easier.”

Then a voice came through the speaker – “Hello?”

“Hello!” Mark shouted as he stood and made his way to the speaker.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is that we can’t figure out what’s causing the problem. Good news is that we can move the elevator to the ground floor and get you guys out.”

“That’s great.”

“We’d like to get going imminently if you guys are okay with that.”

Mark looked over to Emily, who was now standing. She took a deep breath and she nodded indicating she was ready.

“Yeah, we’re ready.”

“Okay. It should take a few minutes for the elevator to start up. We just need to reboot the system first, so the lights may go off for a moment.”

“Okay, sure. Thanks for your help.”

“Hey, that’s no problem. All part of the service. Have a great day!”

“And you.”

Finally, they were gonna get out of here soon. Emily could feel the tension leaving her. Although she was still stuck, the knowledge that she wouldn’t be for much longer made her feel so much better. Mark drifted towards her and proceeded to lean on the railing next to her. Just after he had done so the lights flickered off briefly, but not all at the same time meaning that the cabin was never in complete darkness.

“Okay, guess it’ll get moving soon.”

“Thank God! I can’t wait to get outta here! Oh! Not that you’re not good company, ‘cause you are... You’ve been really great, awesome. I just meant that I really need some fresh air.”

Emily felt her cheeks redden. Mark just smiled.

Suddenly the elevator gave a judder before starting its downward descent. Instinctively Emily tried to grab something and made contact with Mark’s hand. She tried to pull away, embarrassed, but Mark tightened his grip slightly around her hand.

“It’s okay. You can hold my hand if it’ll make you feel better. I don’t mind.”

“Thanks. It kinda does,” she said quietly.

The journey down was short and soon the doors opened to reveal the lobby. They both took a few steps hand in hand before they realised. They both flinched away from the touch and exited the lift. Emily turned to Mark.

“Thank you, Mark. Thanks for helping me in there. I really appreciate it.”

“Anytime, M’lady,” Mark said, bowing his head and tipping an imaginary hat. Emily giggled. Mark gave a small, sad smile, “And now I must bid you farewell. I hope you enjoy the rest of the convention.”

“You too.”

Emily gave him a small wave which Mark returned with a smile and another nod of his head. She watched him wander off into one the main hall and, for some reason, she felt a small pang of sadness.

“Emily!”

She whirled around to see Natalie a short distance away walking towards her and waving frantically. Emily started walking towards her.

“Emily! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I was just about to call you. Panel was a bust. So boring! Ugh! Who was that guy?”

“Him?” Emily turned glanced back at the door Mark has disappeared through, “Oh, he just... helped me. We got stuck in the elevator together.”

“You took the elevator?! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. I had a panic attack earlier, but I feel a lot better now. He really helped distract me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Natalie wiggled her eyebrows, “Is he good looking?”

“Nat!”

“What?” she exclaimed, feigning innocence.

Natalie looked at her expectantly. She wasn’t going to budge until she had an answer. Emily sighed.

“Yes. I guess he was kinda cute.”

“Oooh, Emily. And you thought you wouldn’t enjoy yourself,” Natalie said bumping her hip against Emily’s. “Did you get his number?”

“Damn. I didn’t.”

Emily mentally cursed herself. Mark had mentioned that he’d wanted her to help him with cosplay and he was going to help her with her computer. She’d meant to ask about potentially swapping numbers, but in the relief of getting out of the elevator she had forgotten to mention it.

“Tch. Oh, well. Maybe we’ll bump into him again.”

“Maybe.”

Emily and Natalie spent another hour walking around the rest of the convention before approaching the YouTube section.

“Oh, my gosh! Look!” exclaimed Natalie. She pointed towards a booth straight ahead of them.

“What?” Emily was confused.

“That’s Markiplier’s booth. We have to go. I need a photo with him. He is so cute!”

Emily gave an amused huff and they both walked towards the booth. There were already a few people at the table of the booth blocking their view of the booth’s occupants so they hovered around waiting for their turn. Emily heard a familiar voice, Mark’s voice, so she looked around to see if she could see him. Maybe she could ask him about swapping numbers.

“Hi there!” she heard him say, but she still couldn’t see him, “I’m Mark.”

“I know!” Natalie squealed, “I’m Natalie. Can I... can I get a photo with you? Please?”

“Sure.”

Emily rolled her eyes and spun round, and came face to face with... Mark. She gasped. Mark was Markiplier. Duh! That made sense now.

“M’lady! So good to see you again.” He nodded at her and tipped his imaginary hat.

Emily blushed and gave him a small smile. “Hi.”

“Again?” said Natalie, confused.

“Yeah, we, uh, got stuck in the elevator together.”

“The guy you got stuck in the elevator with was Markiplier?!”

“I guess so,” She turned to Mark and raised an eyebrow, “One or two games, huh?”

Mark shrugged at her with a smile. He then clapped his hands together and looked at Natalie, “So! Did you still want that photo?”

“Yeah. Please. Can you take it Em?”

She didn’t even look at Emily, she was still looking at Mark with dreamy eyes.

“Sure.”

Emily took out her phone and snapped the photo of Mark and her Natalie.

“Can I see it?” Mark asked.

“Uh, yeah, okay,” she replied handing Mark her phone. He took it from her, but seemed to be doing something other than looking at the photo.

“Here,” he said, handing her phone back, “I meant to give you this earlier, but promise me you won’t give it to anyone else. I really don’t want to have to change it again.”

Emily looked at the screen. It showed an entry to her contact list: Mark Fischbach.

“Call me at some point and we’ll, uh, talk about your computer and my costume.”

“Okay,” Emily said, putting her phone back in her pocket, “I promise I won’t give it to anyone. When would be the best time to call you? Sometime during the week?”

“Yeah, sure, anytime. But, if I don’t answer I’m probably recording, so just leave me a message. Okay?”

“Sure. I will.”

“Cool. Anyway, it was great to meet you.” He held his arms out and he and Emily hugged over the table of his booth. He then leant over the table to hug Natalie briefly, “And it was nice to meet you too. You guys enjoy the rest of your day, and I hope you both get home safe.”

And with a quick wave and a quick “Bye, Mark”, they left to finish exploring the convention.

As they walked away Natalie leant close to Emily and spoke in a hushed tone, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe Markiplier gave you his number! Do you know how many girls would kill for that?!”


End file.
